Something Terrible Would Happen

 

It sounds a little bit strange but the idea that something terrible would happen . . .

I feel something here . . .

Something over here . . . It’s like a pressure . . . on my heart.

It’s pushing, it’s like it’s pushing.

And it hurts.

Something is pushing there, it hurts.

Sadness, there’s a lot of sadness.

I don’t want to feel it.

Something is pushing there, it hurts, there is sadness, and there is something that doesn’t want to feel it.

I don’t want to feel it . . .

See You in Hell

 
Satan

[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE]

Pope Francis and Donald Trump were both vexed this past week by natives of shithole countries.

The pope showed up in Chile to accuse local sex abuse victims of calumny against the church.

“Calumny” means he’s calling them liars. Look it up.

Oh that reminds me! Cardinal Law sends his regards.

Then he was on to Peru, where he called violence against women a “plague” across the Latin American region. They’re murderers, rapists . . . and some, I assume, are good people.

What a character! I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.

See you in Hell!

Ghosts

 

You must not think that what I have
accomplished through you

could have been accomplished by any other means.

Each of us is to himself
indelible. I had to become that which could not

be, by time, from human memory, erased.

I had to burn my hungry, unappeasable
furious spirit

so inconsolably into you

you would without cease
write to bring me rest.

Bring us rest. Guilt is fecund. I knew

nothing I made
myself had enough steel in it to survive.

I tried: I made beautiful
paintings, beautiful poems. Fluff. Garbage.

The inextricability of love and hate?

If I had merely made you
love me you could not have saved me.

— Frank Bidart, “The Ghost”
 

By Robert Lowell:
"The Ghost" by Robert Lowell

When Death Is Not Death

 
Coffin

A certain man was believed to have died, and was being prepared for burial, when he revived.

He sat up, but he was so shocked by the scene surrounding him that he fainted.

He was put in a coffin, and the funeral party set off for the cemetery.

Just as they arrived at the grave, he regained consciousness, lifted the coffin lid, and cried out for help.

“It is not possible that he has revived,” said the mourners, “because he has been certified dead by competent experts.”

“But I am alive!” shouted the man.

He appealed to a well-known impartial scientist and jurisprudent who was present.

“Just a moment,” said the expert.

He then turned to the mourners, counting them. “Now we have heard what the alleged deceased has had to say. You fifty witnesses tell me what you regard as the truth.”

“He is dead,” said the witnesses.

“Bury him!” said the expert.

And so he was buried.

Two Reasons For the Low Number of Women in Computer Jobs

 

I saw this chart on LinkedIn with the heading “Chart: Women in tech continue to face uphill battle” and the hashtag #STEMSexism.

Chart

The first reason for the low number of women in computer jobs is that we rarely hear about women in computing except in the context of pay gaps, harassment, discrimination, “uphill battles” and #STEMSexism.

It’s self-perpetuating. “Computing is a terrible profession for women in so many ways.” Followed by “Why aren’t there more women in computing?”

You’ve answered your own question. If you think computing is a hostile profession (I do not, btw), why do you want more women to go into it?

 

The second reason for the low number of women in computer jobs — sometimes the simplest explanations are the best — is that women prefer to do other things.

Men and women are different and make different choices about their lives, as a result of which, women are underrepresented in some professions and overrepresented in others.

Women, for example, are overrepresented in nursing, family counseling, speech pathology, social work, education, to name a few.

Do we hear about a diversity crisis in speech pathology or social work? We don’t, right?

I worked with a nursing organization for five years. About 90 percent of nurses are women, but in five years I can’t remember a single instance where gender bias was cited as a crisis, a dilemma, a problem, or even something as mild as a cause for concern.

Women being overrepresented in certain professions is not widely considered to be a problem. But if women being underrepresented in computer jobs is a problem, then their overrepresentation in other professions is also a problem.

In fact, it’s the same problem. Because where are the women in computing going to come from?

On the safe assumption that the number of women is constant — that a large number of new women are not going to just appear out of nowhere — the women will have to come from other professions that they seem to prefer, the professions in which they are overrepresented.

Sorry girls, we can’t have so many of you working in healthcare, education and other helping professions because we need to boost the computing numbers.

Or — we could calm down about the computing numbers and leave young women to make their own choices about their own lives.

TL;DR -> Women are capable of making decisions for themselves. For the most part, they choose to do things other than work in computer jobs, which is okay. It’s possible that none of us really knows what is the “right” percentage of women in computing and it’s possible that none of us really knows what other people should be doing with their lives.

Thus spoke The Programmer

When we are dead, seek not our tomb in the earth, but find it in the hearts of men. — Epitaph of Jalaludin Rumi

What Shall I Be?

 

I have again and again grown like grass;
I have experienced seven hundred and seventy moulds.
I died from minerality and became vegetable;
And from vegetativeness I died and became animal.
I died from animality and became man.
Then why fear disappearance through death?
Next time I shall die
Bringing forth wings and feathers like angels:
After that soaring higher than angels —
What you cannot imagine. I shall be that.

— Jalaladin Rumi